Ripped Pages from A Bookshelf

Swallowing Desire

"Why when you tell someone no, does it feed your desire?"

- Anonymous

Loving her hurts me in more ways then one. I know that I have her but it's simply not enough. She feels like a drug. When I'm with her, I feel high like a moment of euphoria or ecstasy but the second she's gone I crave her all over again. The only problem with being an addict is the uncertainty. What if she goes? Will this silence I feel now be executed forever? Will my real-life pacemaker cease to start up again?

So many thoughts, feelings, opinions. My thoughts like vines twisting, putting pressure on my heart just for me to simply stop loving her. My thoughts were so clear but now are clouded, rich with the burden of, "Just stop loving her..."

But amongst the darkness and my newly clouded vision, I see a bird. A bird that reminds me how to be free. I turn my head to see a large peaceful lake, the same lake that reminds me of her peace and prosperity. Another light beaming in the corner of my eye causes me to turn my head, to face the fluorescent beams in the night sky. Christmas lights. Yet only in the lights can I seem to find her smile that was gleaming with pride and reflecting back off every surface it could find.

I wander around for a bit, trying to catch my breath as well as chase down the butterflies now awakening from their cocoons inside of me. These winged creatures from the depths of my soul, carry my spirit to a darkened forest. I feel a sense of isolation and abandonment as the butterflies now settle right in front of my eyes. The forest is dark and bewitching, almost like the ones seen in a folk tale. "Don't look too deep." I hear a voice yell, "You will get stuck between where the eye bleeds and the pupil feeds..." Words. So many of them. Flying, flapping, chasing, flagging, engulfing me.

Just stop and think.

Think, think, think.

I stop and pause, to find the sunrise and her eyes all glassy and coated for me. She tells me she loves me but is sad and stuck as she cannot love me. A high-pitched ringing noise floods my ears as I try to faze her and all of it out whilst leaving me with the pondering question.

"How can she love me yet still not be mine?"